bondom34 wrote:bmurph128 wrote:bondom34 wrote:1. Urban did know.
2. As a part of his employment he's legally required to report this. He did not.
Urban knew, but we don't know all the details of the situation. It sounds a lot like it was one of those TWO sided volatile relationships. The real bad guy here is Zach Smith who should be in prison - but from everything I've read and heard, Courtney made this very murky for someone on the outside to decipher what was going on.
And it's worth noting that even the cops had trouble with that - Zach Smith never got arrested despite the police coming out NINE times.
As for Urban not reporting it - Gene Smith knew. Technically there's a clause in their contracts about reporting incidents to compliance/HR - but from Urban's perspective, what constitutes an incident? That ultimately is why he was suspended. The university is saying that he should have determined that this was an "incident" to report, but it's not that cut and dry. That's a perfectly innocent reason for Urban to not report it.
The reason he should report it is ethical in part, and legal in part. Deleting your old texts to Smith isn't leading me to buy into his idea that he simply forgot, and Smith's work records indicating he needed to work on personal relationships on his yearly review seems to imply something was amiss. To add to his wife knowing and the what now seems to be edited police report? There's a lot of smoke if there's no fire.
There have been quite a few things that have come out about Courtney. Including her mom coming out and defending Zach Smith. McMurphy also has texts where she is condemning him.
But IMO that about sums up that type of relationship - I bet we've all seen this type of relationship without the physical abuse - the type where both parties have short fuses and blow up at each other all the time. That Zach Smith physically harmed her is unacceptable and he needs to be in prison.
But from an outsiders perspective it's just not that simple. Based on everything we know, I think that both Urban and Shelly have seen Courtney's crazy at some point - enough to know that there is at least a modicum of truth to whatever Zach Smith was telling Urban (i.e. Yes, I hit her but she was attacking me) - if I'm Urban and I know the police have been involved, I'm not doing anything until I see what that outcome was.
Urban admitted to basically favoring Zach Smith in this situation because of his relationship with Earl Bruce - another reason for the suspension.
I personally believe that Urban and Shelly told Ohio State their side of the story - and that they believed them and decided it would look insensitive to tell the public that - which is what I said above, that Courtney's actions led them to believe Zach was not the only guilty party.
But OSU can't come out and say that because of where we are right now as a society - people were condemning Zach Smith before even hearing the story - myself included - but how would that story have changed if Courtney pulled a knife on him before each one of those incidents? None of us waited to see if that was the case though.
I obviously don't know any of this for sure, but then nobody else does either.